Al Davis is an entrepreneur, business strategist, consultant, teacher, avid world traveler, author, and lifelong student, in no particular priority or chronological order. As an entrepreneur, he has been a founder and/or executive in five startup companies, some resounding successes and some dismal failures. As a business consultant, he has assisted some of the largest corporations in the World and mentored many of the tiniest. As a teacher, he has lectured 2,000+ times and taught in 28 countries, with extended assignments in Australia, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, and United States. He has visited 90 countries and slept on all seven continents; this latter feat completed on December 8, 2003 when he and his wife camped overnight on Antarctica. As an author, he has written 100+ articles in journals, conferences, and the press, as well as nine books. And although he considers learning from doing and observing far more significant educational accomplishments than degrees, he happens to have earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois. You can learn more details about the author at his website, www.a-davis.com.

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This book is a collection of essays, each one a true story. Each describes the exciting experiences we've had as we travel, experience, and learn. Although I've visited every country on the continental Western Hemisphere, I've selected only the most interesting stories for this compendium. The stories describe our adventures to Antigua & Barbuda, Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Guyana, Honduras, Suriname, Uruguay, and Antarctica. I hope you enjoy hearing our stories as much as we enjoyed living them and enjoy talking about them. I have an insatiable thirst for unusual travel. Let me explain what I mean by unusual travel. You are not likely to find me in a Parisian café drinking coffee and eating baguettes with melted brie (although I have done so). I don't enjoy such a comfortable trip. On the other hand, you are also not likely to find me ice climbing on glaciers in Greenland (I would love to visit Greenland, but certainly not to ice climb). I don't enjoy such a dangerous trip; nor do I have the physical stamina. I do enjoy travel that resides somewhere between these two extremes: like traveling on a 3-passenger klotok on the rivers of Kalimantan, sleeping on the deck; like exploring Antarctica on a 50-person research vessel; like spending a month living with little electricity in Jos, Nigeria; like renting a car and spending a few weeks driving around Southern Africa; or like spending a night with former headhunters. Those of you who love taking cruises on 3,000+ passenger liners will likely find my kind of travel too dangerous; after all, it is possible to get very sick, or even die, doing the things I do, but for my wife and me the rewards of meeting new people, learning new cultures, eating new cuisines, seeing animals that few westerners ever see far outweigh the perils. Those of you who love to rock climb the Pyrenees, explore underground rivers within caves, bungee jump from helicopters, skydive, or climb K2, will likely find our kind of travel downright mundane.